In the Absence of Reliable Ghosts: Sexuality, Historiography, South Asia with Anjali Arondekar

Anjali Arondekar
Speaker
Associate Professor of Feminist Studies and Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz

Ritu Birla
Chair
Associate Professor, Department of History and Director, CSAS, University of Toronto

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Histories of sexuality routinely mediate past(s) through archival forms of marginality, disenfranchisement and loss. In the specific case of South Asia, sexuality is rescued from the detritus of hegemonic histories of colonialism and nationalism and placed within more reparative narratives of reform and rights. This talk engages two key questions: What if we are to shift our attention from the reading of sexuality as marginality to understanding it as a site of vitalized abundance – even futurity? What happens if we abandon the historical language of search and rescue and focus instead on a history of sexuality that paradoxically foregrounds both its unreliability and its ethical substance?